Trends and Fads #1

Maybe I should have made the title 37.5 ways to go with the current Trend and Fad of a number in the heading. The surprising thing about numbers is that the more choices we are faced with the less likely we are to make a decision. So I have given it a number to be with the current trend and fad of a number in the title, shortly we will have a new heading Fad. Maybe no heading and you the reader can try and work out what its about if you ever bother to stop and read.

Psychological studies suggest we have a limit of between 5 and 7 before we become overloaded and either fail to remember all points or are confronted with too many choices, so don’t make a decision. Long lists of points or actions to undertake are equally senseless by the time you have reached point 10 we are struggling to recall points 1–4 they have become a blur. In fact our brain is conserving energy and will only handle around seven items at once add another and it shoves an earlier one off the cliff getting rid of the trash so to speak. So No you aren’t showing early signs of Dementia just plain old information overload.

There are plenty of tricks to aid our memorization but do I want to really have 30, 50, 100 terms stored away with mnemonic, dam another thing to remember. I’m having enough trouble with days of the week when everyday is a workday and a holiday is whenever I want one, now that is a sign of dementia. How easy it is to be labelled.

Surprisingly we can remember lots of stuff without really trying. Whenever we are happy and enjoying whatever we are doing remembering is not a problem, bored or disinterested and what were we talking about literally two seconds later. Ever driven down the Highway and passed a road sign warning you that the next 197 kilometers are boring and yes it was, can we remember it, no and that’s a real worry especially pre auto drive cars.

Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow discusses brain energy and that our daily peak supply is limited to about 4 hours in the morning and 1.5 hours in the afternoon, after lunch and a nap. Outside of the peak energy level we slip into default mode and that is best summed up by our response “What was I thinking about when I made that choice or bought that”.